Wednesday, February 24, 2016

The Magicians, Season 1, Episode 6: Impractical Applications

So last week we discovered to (no-one’s shock) that
Fillory is real! And has big monsters and kidnapped women and… maybe isn’t just
that great. Quinn has realised, after much belated growing up, that actually
wanting to live in your fantasy world (with monsters being real) is actually
not all that fun. Which is actually pretty devastating to someone who has spent
his life basically escaping reality by running to Fillory. Which is now not a
shiny, happy safe space. It’s like retreating to your safe space and finding a
bear in it. An angry bear. I actually like it, it’s a nice way of examining
this character that I find interesting despite still wanting that aforementioned
bear to eat him. Nomnomnom

Anyway, the main plot is the trials – which is a
combination of exam, character life lesson and hazing. And is actually really
well done – seriously, Elliot and Margo should take high tea and handle all
exams. Elements I liked – the ruthless, outside-the-box practical lesson where
you beat trial 1 by actually cheating. Trial 2 then teaching co-operation in a
kind of fun way – and Trial 3 causing the characters to reveal some deep dark
secret about themselves and, in the process, basically have them admit
something to themselves. We also have an unnecessary method of threatening
Penny with gay porn (because hey, they have a gay not-character doing his
stereotypical best, why not throw in gay jokes?)

Back to Quinn (who is super duper awkward in his naked
reveal ritual with Alice – and they don’t even get naked) who is finally dealing
with his constant, avoidant habit of running and hiding all the time. Even when
he’s moved to a magical school, literally his dream life, he is still running
and hiding.

May this lead to character growth and my not wanting to feed
Quinn to a bear. Much

Alice’s revelation is that she desperately tries not to
be awesome and constantly holds back because she is afraid that being as
amazing as she is would make her even more alienated than she already is. So she’s
failing at being the best she can be AND being popular.

But there’s another plot that primarily develops Kady who
desperately needed it. We knew Marina had something on Kady and was forcing her
to steal for her (which is also why we see why Kady is so utterly desperate to
stay in school – she needs it to bribe Marina)

So what does Marina have on Kady? Her mother, Hannah.
Hannah is another hedge witch who falls in with Julia to try and get even with
Marina (after showing off some nifty power). Of course Julia’s willing to go
for this so MORE MAGIC MOAAAAAR MOOOOOOOOOOAR! And they form a brief alliance.
It gets shaky when Julia learns their history – when Hannah was working with
Marina and completely screwed up leading to people dying and Marina picking up
the pieces. In return, Kady basically had to serve Marina: meaning Hannah kind
of exploited her daughter AND was an unreliable partner in nefarious
situations. I can’t blame Julia for not being all on side with this as her
partner

While this is a good way to learn more of Kady’s past and
watch Julia positively sprint towards the dark side, it didn’t actually help
with bringing down Marina. The spell to steal Marina’s stash worked – but that
stash has been replaced with an evil, eye-ball bleeding death case. Goodbye
Hannah.